The Relationship and Comparison between Managers Communication Skills and Customer Life-Cycle in public and Private Sports Facilities

Nowadays attention to customer satisfaction and loyalty is one of the most important factors for the growth and development of business owners. Among these, it is important to pay attention to human communication in marketing services between the person providing the service and the customers. The purpose of this research was to study the relationship and comparison between managers' communication skills and customer life-cycle in both public and private sports facilities. This research was based on descriptive correlational survey. Statistical population included all customers of the governmental and private sports facilities in Alborz province. As the statistical population was unlimited, to determine sample size, availability of the samples and cluster sampling method were used. As the result, statistical sample included 390 members. To collect data, a questionnaire of communication skills questionnaire by Vakilli (2012) and a customer life-cycle questionnaire by Wav & Lee (2011) were utilized. For inferential analysis, due to normal data, a Pearson Correlation Coefficient test was used. Also, Two-Sample t-Test was used for independent groups to make a comparison between Public and private sectors. The results of Pearson tests indicated that there's a positive significant relationship between all aspects of communication skills and customer life-cycle of both governmental and private sports facilities but there were not equal in all aspects. Thus, it is suggested to sports facility managers to pay special attention to their communication skills in order to increase the life cycle of their clients.